There is not a direct cause and effect connection between the use of neonics and CCD, and I believe there is some discussion about the reality of CCD itself. After all, beekeepers lose hives all the time for a variety of reasons, and the introduction of mites and small hive beetles have caused the loss of a vast number of hives, sometimes in a way that is very difficult to pinpoint. PMS can take what appears to be a very healthy hive and covert it to a hive full of stores but empty of bees in early winter, and a poor pollen season in August can do much the same thing.
Feral hives seem to be increasing in my area, so the bees are adapting to mites, but we shall see what they do with small hive beetles as they are just showing up. However, some large operations are still reporting large losses (50% and up), but from what I've read, they seem to be the same ones fairly often and are large scale migratory keepers, at least the ones that show up in the news, and that's a different thing than what I do. Moving hives has to be stressful to the bees, and proper protein nutrition can be a real problem on things like almonds and blueberries, again this can cause serious losses in winter if the proper protein supplements are not given at the right time.
Now, the EPA approval procedure, if that's what you want to call it, for neonics was terrible, and they are being used as seed treatment to "enhance stand density" rather than being applied for control of a specific pest. I would not personally permit broadcast use of any pesticide as a preventive in the absence of a specific target -- I'm not a farmer, I don't make any money off them or the farm products, and they are POISONOUS, not innocuous substances. Bayer also appears to have been pretty sloppy in their environmental assessments and we have gotten some nasty surprises in terms of soil buildup and persistence that were "unanticipated" (meaning Bayer didn't look very closely).
Peter
